On Wednesday after the close, Tesla released their third-quarter results. After a muted reaction to their Robotaxi launch, expectations weren't exactly peaking. Fortunately, the numbers impressed, and the stock initially shot up 12% in after-market trade and pushed higher during the day to a 22% gain!

In the earnings call, Elon mentioned that they produced their seven millionth vehicle this quarter. Tesla is now an established business that had positive free cash flows of $2.7 billion for the three months. The company sits on around $33.6 billion in cash, a strong war chest if ever needed. I remember the days, not so long ago in 2018, when they were hours away from running out of money.

There is a lot of focus on their margins after they were forced to cut prices because of the fast interest rate hikes in 2022 which squeezed demand. Operating margin came in at 10.8%, a solid rise from 6.3% in the last quarter. This is a big reason why the shares popped. Even the Cybertruck (pictured) has turned to profit after many years of loss-making.

Out of the $25.2 billion in revenue, $20 billion is from cars. The rest comes from their renewable division which is finally gathering momentum. That business had a solid gross margin of 30.5%.

As interest rates come down, we expect EV demand to pick up. Their existing business is ticking along nicely. The upside here will come from one or more of their side hustles: self-driving cars, CyberCabs, and robots. Expect lots of excitement and quite a few failures along the way.

Jason Zweig writes in the Wall Street Journal: "Investing has been "gamified" with pulsating brokerage apps, streaming market updates, screaming TV pundits, swarms of traders egging each other on over social media and TikTok videos bragging of big gains. Never before has the pull of technology and the madness of the crowd been so hard to resist. Yet resist them you must, if you are to have any hope of being an intelligent investor."

So here's my Friday advice, to complement the words above. Aggressive trading is a bad idea because it doesn't work. The vast majority of short-term speculators just lose money. The price moves in equities are unpredictable over days and weeks, but become more reliably positive over months, years and decades.

It has been almost two months since the two-pot retirement system came into force. Nearly 1.4 million people have taken over R26 billion out of their retirement savings already! SARS has received a nice R6 billion bump in tax collections too. We might get updated figures in next week's Medium Term budget.

Old Mutual estimates that their members are using the withdrawals for debt repayment (60%), emergencies (23%), and medical expenses (4%). I suppose that is a good thing for our local banks. The problem is that people who get into situations of unsustainable debt levels once, usually do it again, particularly if an easy-to-access, once-off windfall cleared that debt.

I understand why the government put the two-pot system in place. It makes sense that people in an emergency can access some savings instead of saddling themselves with expensive, unsecured debt. The problem is that taking R1 out of the retirement savings now, is the equivalent of many Rands in value on retirement day. Compound growth is amazing, but your money needs to be invested for decades to truly work.

Xiaohongshu, China's version of Instagram, is making waves as the country's fastest-growing social media platform with over 300 million active users - half of them Gen Z. Despite the name "Little Red Book," which might sound like a nod to Mao Zedong, the founders say the app has no connection to the former Communist Party leader.

The app has exploded in popularity, generating $1 billion in quarterly sales. Most of its users are based in China, and they've turned Xiaohongshu into a key driver for travel trends, especially with younger Chinese tourists who engage in daka (or punch card tourism).

This phenomenon has tourists hopping from one photogenic spot to another, purely for the 'gram'. While this trend has boosted the travel industry, it's not without risks. In one tragic case, a tourist fell into Indonesia's Ijen volcano while attempting to capture the perfect selfie, highlighting the dangers of prioritising social media content over safety.

The real question is whether this app has the potential to thrive in the West, like TikTok has managed to do.

Microsoft Excel is 40 years old. It is also the cornerstone of many industries - Why Excel is hard to kill.

There should be repercussions if companies knowingly do harm. In the case of tobacco manufacturers, the chickens have come home to roost - Tobacco firms to pay $23.6 billion in proposed Canada settlement.

Asian markets are mostly higher this morning. Benchmarks in mainland China, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan rose, while only India and Japan slid.

In local company news, Cashbuild posted a 22% drop in headline earnings per share for the year, with operating profit down 19% (16% if you exclude impairments) and a 6% rise in operating expenses. Management cited the impact of low-quality imports as a key drag on the building materials market.

US equity futures are in the red pre-market. The Rand is trading at around R17.68 to the US Dollar.

Have a good weekend. It is the last one of October.